T.S. Eliot

Among those poets invited to Buck House for the Contemporary British Poetry party were British beat bard Michael Horovitz. “And where do you write?” asked Prince Philip. “In a slightly smaller room than this,” replied Horovitz. Prince Philip: “No, I mean where do you live?” Horovitz: “Oh! Just off Portobello Road ...”

With the benefit of hindsight, it's easy to see the work of Sarah Kane as forming an artistic black hole - a once bright star that has collapsed under its own gravity. Certainly these two plays chart the trajectory of Kane's depression from the weak light of fading hope to the extinguishing darkness of her suicide in 1999. As such, her work may be hard to extol, but it is equally hard not to respect.